Whether they acknowledge it or not, for most individuals, being aware of, and monitoring, the state of their finances and tracking their overall financial situation or “financial health” is an extremely important and fundamental responsibility. Unfortunately, due to a lack of time, limits of currently available resources, and in some instances, a lack of motivation, many individuals have historically failed to recognize and accept this responsibility. However, recent economic events have reminded many individuals of the urgent need to determine, and monitor, the state of their finances, as well as identify realistic financial goals, formulate plans of action to meet those financial goals, and monitor progress towards financial goals.
Several computing system implemented financial management systems are currently available to help an individual, or an authorized user on behalf of an individual, gather a user's financial data and/or process/analyze that user's own financial data into various budgets and/or reports based on parameters commonly provided by the user. Typically, these currently available computing system implemented financial management systems provide an individual/user with financial data such as, but not limited to, the user's overall financial worth data, the user's income data, the user's expense data, and the user's transactional data. However, currently, computing system implemented financial management systems typically present the user with data, budgeting analysis, and/or reports in the form of largely resultant data based on historical events. As a result, currently available computing system implemented financial management systems offer only time delayed summaries of financial activity after the fact, i.e., after the transactional choices have already been made by the user.
While this type of time-delayed “reactive” monitoring of financial goals and budget analysis currently available from computing system implemented financial management systems has several uses, it fails to provide the user with real-time monitoring and budgeting data at the time the user is contemplating a purchase. Therefore, the time-delayed “reactive” monitoring of financial goals and budget analysis currently available from computing system implemented financial management systems often does little to help the consumer ensure they are living within their means, making the desired progress towards their financial goals, and/or staying within their defined budgetary limits.